GxP Lifeline

It has been proven time and again that necessity is the mother of invention. From the printing press to electric cars, the story is similar. The printing press answered the need for a more rapid dissemination of information during the Renaissance, while the electric car is a response to the need for a zero-emission car today. In regulated environments, the dire need to lighten the software validation burden led to the development of a groundbreaking application.

Prevent your supply chain from becoming neglected by strategically designing each link in the chain. The key to a successful supply chain isn't focusing on the endpoint but rather bolstering each location along the way.

Get up to speed on key takeaways from what are expected to be some of the most tranformational trends to affect the pharmaceutical industry in 2018. And for further analysis of some of the top trends in pharmaceuticals this year, check out the associated white paper.

At the beginning of each year, it’s intriguing to look into a crystal ball to get a glimpse of what the upcoming year will look like. Given how fast technology evolves, if you so much as blink you could miss out on critical insight regarding some new trends.

Glean some insights from the U.K. 's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) recently published final guidance on GxP Data Integrity, two years after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued draft guidance on data integrity and compliance with Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP).

Business is booming for nutraceuticals as consumers turn to vitamins, minerals, herbs, innovative foods and other natural products to improve their health. The industry has expanded its focus to not just provide natural, clean products but also innovative, high-quality ones. The five biggest trends for 2018 reflect this, bringing new steps and creativity to the product development process.

This month's tip concerns complaint analysis, and the fact that much of the labor of collecting the information for this quality step has already been recorded in writing during the pre-market phase by quality personnel.

First the bad news. As long as health care-related data remains a valuable commodity, security breaches and data theft will persist. The good news is global regulatory agencies are ramping up their cybersecurity measures in an effort to restore relevance to the “protection” component of protected health information (PHI).

Transition to the new version of ISO 9001:2015 is upon us. Many have put it off for a whole host of reasons, and we are now at a point where we all need to act. Differing opinions exist about how easy or how hard the changes will be, but many factors determine that degree of difficulty.

When working on my bachelor’s degree, I had a memorable experience in a creativity and problem-solving course. In order to calm the growling of our starving student stomachs, the professor said he would reward us with a treat when we turned in our completed homework assignment at the next class period.

The sophistication and value-added benefits of automated, integrated document control management tools available to manufacturers in the life sciences has come a long way since software solutions were introduced in the 1980s on 5 1/4-inch floppy disks.

When the medical device excise tax was suspended recently, the industry was left with a sense of déjà vu. Between January 2013 and January 2018, the tax was implemented once and frozen twice. How long will this touch-and-go situation continue?

8 March, 2018
by Christine Simmon, Executive Director of the Biosimilars Council, a division of the Association for Accessible Medicines

It is a difficult irony that even as medical breakthroughs and new life-saving and life-extending treatments bring hope to patients and families across the country, it also is getting harder for many to afford these critical medicines. The rapidly rising cost of brand-name biologic medicines, which comprise the vast majority of new therapies in the pipeline, mean they are often inaccessible for America’s patients.

This is the third post in the series, “The Practical Guide to the ISO 13485:2016 Practical Guide” for medical devices. This post explores examples and application provided within Practical Guide for the implementation of a “risk-based approach.”

Christopher J. Devine delves into the topic of medical device installation recordkeeping, and why proper documentation of this process is essential to successfully installing medtech and avoiding warning letters and other mishaps.

Probably one of the most significant concerns for anyone responsible for implementing, deploying and maintaining a quality management system is the prioritization of resources. Trend analysis is one technique that can help determine if something has changed with a process (quality, production, or service). Trend analysis can be used to monitor a process, especially non-manufacturing processes such as complaints, nonconformances and deviations to aid in the decision for escalation for corrective and preventive action (CAPA).